I just bought Neverwinter Nights and it runs but it doesn’t run well. I’m pretty sure I need a video card but I don’t know what kind–agp or pci–will work with my computer. I don’t know the difference, so I don’t know how to tell if I buy a Geforce if I can even install it.
Help! I want to play my game–and I want it to be fluid!
What brand and model is your pc? Can’t tell from the specs above if you have and AGP slot or not. You definitely need a video card upgrade. If you have a generic brand pc, open up the case and look for a brown or grey colored slot the same size as the white PCI slots. If you don’t see a different colored slot than white then you don’t have AGP available to you (its integrated to the motherboard). There are still viable PCI solutions for NVidia and ATI.
inside on the the mother board (which is the really big thing that takes up the entire right side of my computer, right?) there is
white slot that is empty
white slot with a big board perpendicular to the mother board
white slot with a smaller board parell to above board
white slot that is empty
then a cable that plugs into the board(which I think is sound b/c i had to play with it when I installed my CDRW underneath my DVD)
its too late/early for spell check or grammar check
HP’s web support search is acting stupid right now so I can’t look up your model. Is this a model sold in the US? If you can navigate to www.hp.com and do a search in the support section, type in “pavilion xl733”. See if you can come up with a spec sheet for your model. Note the number and type of slots it shows. If it says something like “3 PCI; 1 AGP” then you’ve got an AGP slot available to you. If you see “4 PCI” then no. From what you described in your last post it doesn’t sound like you do.
But all is not lost. I have an ATI Radeon PCI card that serves me well. Check your local computer stores and look for video cards that specifically state that it is a PCI card. If you’re not sure and don’t trust the salepeople, note the brand and model of the card then look it up on the web. Hope this helps you out.
open up your comp and look at the motherboard… do what HorseFlesh says… look for white PCI slots… on the top of the first white slot should be a grey or brown AGP slot… the size is generally smaller than the white PCI slot size… if you see this grey/brown slot, you have AGP support. Buy a good AGP video card and install it. If you don’t see the grey/brown slot, buy a good PCI video card and do the same.
in both cases, you will have to enter BIOS on boot-up and change the primary video setting to PCI/AGP instead of on-board.
in both cases, the onboard graphics chip will be bypassed and thus made redundant. don’t worry about it. You could use this on-board video for attaching another monitor. It’s a no-hassle 30 second installation.
If you’re looking to play games with good effects, consider buying more RAM. you have 191 which is good. 256 is better.
AGP is better than PCI. If you have an AGP slot, buy an AGP card.
Two of my friends have had trouble disabling their on-board video and using a new video card. I wish I had a solution in case you have trouble, but I don’t. I just wanted to give a heads-up.
Nah, the video memory should have no effect. Depending on how flexible your computer’s BIOS is, however, you may have trouble with the integrated video itself.
You see, the trouble w/ integrated stuff is that it likes doing things its own way and is enabled by default. If you have something better, they don’t play nicely, so you have to tell the integrated video to shove off. This should be a matter of going into the BIOS, finding something that says “integrated video,” and setting “enable/disable” to disable. (You want to do all this after you get a new video card, of course.)
And, yeah, it sounds like you have to get a PCI video card. I’d personally get something made by nVidia, but then I have a Radeon installed in my machine, so it’s not like it matters all that much.